The non exsisting sound card

lol ive been looking around for quite awhile for a sound card that's great for gaming (supports eax 3.0+) and can use a toslink optical cable and support dts encoding for my reciever. so far i have had no luck. the AV-710 is good for music. the Bluegears is good for music and alright for games, and the xfi is good for music and fantastic for games. that is what i've picked up so far, only problem is that the xfi doesn't support optical unless you get their little 100 dollar gimic of taking the analog sound and encoding it with 5.1 dts and converting it to toslink. the other option is getting the more expensive premium or whatever version that has optical output but its on the front of the case?! that doesn't make sense to me but i didn't design it so what can i say. so does anyone have any ideas on a soundcard that has these features? or am i going to have to take the front bay of the xfi and cut it down and diy it for the back of my rig? thx

I'm waiting for BlueGear's XPlosion soundcard (comming Jan). Dolby Digital AND DTS encoding!


LINK: http://www.bluegears.com/xplosion.html

mmmmmm i just checked that out before you posted... looks quite tasty, only question is will this card be alright for 5.1 gaming?

i would have to disagree with your take on the x-fi and say it isn't that good for music and agree that it's great for gaming, the x-fi except for the elite pro uses the same opamps and DACs as the audigy2, DACs affect the sound quality immensely, the av-710 and any bluegears card (existant or not) will do you better for music

X-FI = GREAT for gaming OK for music and movies
BlueGears = GREAT for music and movies OK for games

thegreek said:

X-FI = GREAT for gaming OK for music and movies
BlueGears = GREAT for music and movies OK for games

Click to expand...

correct, also

Chaintech AV-710 = GREAT sound quality throughout in 2 channel hi-sample rate, bit-perfect digital passthrough, BAD surround, and up to EAX 2